bigsnake49

Where they have it.

5x5 of 5G does not a usable 5G network make. They need Sprint's spectrum to deploy 5G to its full glory.

It seems that the Justice Department and FCC filed an amicus brief supporting the merger: "In their filing, the Justice Department and FCC argued that if the states, led by New York and California, succeed in killing the deal the end result will be that rural areas of the United States will be slower to get access to 5G, the next generation of wireless." https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/u-justice-department-fcc-fight-152453519.html

Thank you Robert for enlightening some of these guys on what capitalism is all about. It is for investor to make money. It is not to bring you, the public, lower prices. Lower prices only come about only when the cost of labor goes down (imports), you have achieved great efficiencies and you want to steal customers from your competitors, you have too much merchandise in your warehouse or you can't compete in any other way. Unfortunately Sprint cannot compete in any other way. Between lower prices and having to pay your debt, there is not enough money to invest in your network. Lowering prices in the short term is fine but as a long term strategy leads to a spiral of death.

Misleading headline as usual. From the article: "JPMorgan, one of the banks lined up this month to lend Dish cash, was offering to back the company even earlier. A June 27 email from a JPMorgan banker displayed in court Wednesday arranged for financing of Dish's purchase of Sprint prepaid brand Boost Mobile with SoftBank's support. Mr. Ergen said the company was seeking a $1 billion general-purpose loan at the time and thought the SoftBank assistance "would give us margin" because the Japanese investment company can borrow at a "much lower rate" that could save Dish $70 million to $100 million. The Justice Department also approved the funding arrangement, which remains contingent on the T-Mobile purchase of Sprint closing, Mr. Ergen added." It's like somebody cosigning for you (your parents) so you can get a lower rate. Or taking out a loan for you because they have a better credit score and then loaning you the money for the same rate they got it. Softbank has been loaning Sprint money at a lower rates so they can refinance their debt so the interest payments can be lower.

There was a time when I was driving on a Farm-To-Market road outside of Austin TX. Nothing but farmland for miles around. Yet I had Sprint signal, enough to make a phone call to my wife. And I thought how can Sprint make any money, not enough subscribers and there are 2 other companies here (T-Mobile did not cover this particular FTM road). I still have the same question.

I could see them actually spending a little bit less since they don't need to put an enodeB or the equivalent in 5G parlance at every site. They could implement a C-RAN architecture with only the RRHs at each site. They also don't need to be a nationwide competitor, just nail the cities and larger towns.

The only time a merger should not be approved is if the resulting entity has too much power in the market place. Nothing else. The new T-Mobile will not have too much power it will barely have as many subs as Verizon and its revenue will fall far short of the big two since it does not have as many postpaid subs. All this bellyaching about prices is just that, bellyaching. Plus they did promise that they will not raise prices for three years.

People don't realize that Sprint and T-Mobile don't owe anybody low prices. Their obligation is to their shareholders. There is no magic formula that says that 3 carriers + MVNOs are going to lead to higher prices or lower prices. Remember that the states did not present any anti-trust evidence (how could they), they just presented evidence that it might need to higher prices.

He could have agreed with John Legere and told the judge that it could lead to bankruptcy. But he did not. Instead he and Coombes said that there is a plan B. Instead of bankruptcy, retrenchment. It totally makes economic sense not just for Sprint but also for T-Mobile. Let the big two and maybe the rural co-ops fight for the rural customers.

Yep and that's why this merger is needed. If they have to retrench to only large cities and towns, they will probably concentrate in serving those towns and cities well and abandon the rest. They can probably lease their spectrum in those smaller towns to other providers and get roaming in return. But they will no longer offer service in those little towns.

Also from the same article: Under questioning by the states’ lawyer, Combes said there was a “Plan B” for Sprint in the event the merger with T-Mobile failed to go though. Under that plan, Sprint would focus on fewer markets than it currently does, though its network would still cover about three quarters of the U.S. population. “Sprint two years from now would be a very different from Sprint today, because we would cease to be a national competitor,” Claure said, adding the company would likely have to borrow money and raise prices.Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/sprint-can-survive-without-t-mobile-ex-ceo-claure-testifiesCopyright © BloombergQuint So be careful what you wish for. Maybe your market will be the one that they pull back from. Maybe they won't be in as many rural and small town markets. Or they have to stop having such liberal roaming policies. They will probably have to sell Boost and close the stores in the markets they abandon. Yeah New York and California will probably still be served.

The cable cos will also be huge bidders for C-Band and CBRS. Prices will go up no matter what, whether they buy Sprint or not. T-Mobile no longer needs to compete on price. At least if they acquire Sprint prices will not go up for what 3-5 years. Of course they could increase prices in other ways like not giving you as much of a break on the handsets.

Who is going to finance such a large merger of Dish swallowing T-Mobile? I am sure that Dish will ride on New T-Mobile's network for as long as they can. But New T-Mobile will not touch AWS-4. They will host AWS-3 and 600MHZ and continue hosting 800MHz but Dish needs to pony up for AWS-4 deployment whether they do it themselves or T-Mobile hosts it. I have no problem if they never develop their own network but there is a maximum of 5 years of being an MVNO per the merger agreement, I think, but that can be changed. I think that offering video on mobile devices for free if you join their network will attract the younger generation. Dish already has content licenses. Lest we forget, the cable cos will be major players in the CBRS/C band spectrum. They can offload the rural/highway coverage to Verizon and use their own small cell based networks to service the rest. They can also play the video on mobile devices game since they have content agreements as well.

No, Ergen wanted to sell the whole Dish, nobody wants to buy all of it. After what Dish pulled at the AWS-3 auction to pump up the value of their spectrum nobody wanted to deal with them. The FCC does not want to deal with taking spectrum back particularly spectrum bought in auction. I am sure that Dish could tie them up in court for many many years.

Thanks!

I was thinking about the device side. If there is a setting that will aggregate the two data streams, the LTE stream and the WiFi stream.

FCC wanted Dish to deploy its spectrum, Dish was hesitant to enter a 4 player market, making it a 5 player market. This merger solves couple of problems. It solves Sprint's capex problems, T-Mobile's spectrum problem and Dish's (and FCC's) spectrum deployment problem. Win, win, win!

I changed the backhaul to WiFi and did a speediest. I get about the same results as LTE backhaul. On the other hand if I leave WiFi on on the phone itself I get twice the performance. Is there a way to aggregate the links? LTE backhauled cellular + WiFi?

Sprint has pretty much neglected our area. T-Mobile improved by leaps and bounds in this area when they acquired MetroPCS. Metro duplicated the Verizon network throughout Florida and had developed quite a following. Sprint's network actually went backwards in that they replaced some macro sites beach side with small cells + band 26. Not smart because small cells just don't have the coverage. Forced me to get an MB.

Same here, this merger has taken way too long to either complete or reject.

While I applaud all that work they have done lately, it was all borrowed money. Their debt load increased from all the capex spending. There's no magic in this. You spend money your network improves. You spend money you don't have, your debt increases.

I think they would probably declare Chapter 11 soon after the merger is not approved.

I am going to say 2 weeks max for this trial. The judge is my kind of judge: make your argument, make it quick, skip the bullshit. Defense, what do you have to counteract the plaintiffs argument. He does not want the lawyers pontificating from the podium. One thing that I have not seen addressed yet is one of standing. Which is to say, the states have no standing to sue, the feds are the interstate regulators and they have crafted a good agreement to save Sprint and create a new competitor.

Look I understand that Sprint customers value price over everything else, I do. I am one of them, I only signed up for one of those $15/month deals because it was so cheap. My main lines are through Spectrum. But I don't think that my $15/month will contribute much to Sprint's capex and debt repayment.